THE PURIFICATION OF TTIE BLOOD, ETC. 59 



wheat taken from the mud-lining of the mummy 

 cases of Thebes. The peculiarity of the wheat 

 bears in its character evidence of its antiquity. 

 It is the wheat of mighty nations, high in civili- 

 zation, whose power and splendour, as predicted 

 by the prophets of old, passed away, or barely 

 lingered, before what we call antiquity com- 

 menced. 



What is this long continuance of dormant 

 vitality, but a modification of that law which 

 governs the torpidity of so many animals in 

 what is commonly termed a state of hyberna- 

 tion ? The seeds of plants torpid for centuries 

 underground, have still a latent life — they have 

 never parted with the vital principle. The 

 same observation applies to certain animalcules, 

 (Botiferaj) which after years of latent life have 

 been restored to activity. Who then can tell 

 through how long a period the germs, infinitely 

 minute, of these animalcules, endowed with 

 latent life, may be carried along by the wind, 

 swept over continents and oceans, buried in the 

 sand of the desert, or entombed in the earth, 

 waiting, so to speak, for a proper nidus or 

 medium of development ?* 



* Marvellous indeed are these phenomena, but they are not 

 without a parallel even in the moral world. Wc have alluded 

 to the vegetation of plants, long buried under the soil, and 

 quickened into life by being unexpectedlv turned up to the 

 earth's surface. So often it has happened on the stage of 

 history. Individuals who had remained in quiet obscurity, 

 have had talents and properties of good and evil, previously 

 unsuspected by themselves, and by all around them, rapidly 

 developed by critical emergencies. Nor even in the spiritual 

 world are we without kindred analogies. As seeds vegetate 

 after long appearing destitute of vitality, so often have 

 instructions and counsels, communicated by pious parents or 

 faithful pastors, become— through the Holy Spirit's quicken- 



